Category: bulletin boards

Inspiring Positive Character: A Reading Response Bulletin Board or Research Board

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I created this reading response and interactive bulletin board to integrate my two passions, social emotional learning and reading instruction. I’m a strong believer in allowing students free choice of their independent reading, but sometimes it can be hard to plan assignments that keep students accountable for that reading if you don’t know what they will be reading. I have found that this is a reading response that all of my students can do no matter what their book choice may be, and it is just enough of a response that I can monitor their comprehension of that reading.

In my opinion, any time is a good time to have your students thinking about positive character traits. You could choose to use this as an ongoing, year-long, reading response activity, or as a Black History Month or Women’s History Month activity to celebrate inspirational change leaders in history. Because of this flexibility, this reading response could be used as a quick research project, or with any independent reading choice, fiction or nonfiction, during your students’ daily independent reading time.

Another option to note is that you can do this a couple different ways. You could focus on one character trait at a time, a few, or all at once. I take time to introduce all of the character traits with my students. Then, as they are reading and come across an inspirational example or story (from nonfiction or fiction), they can choose the trait paper that best fits the example they want to share. You could set an expectation for a certain number of responses per week, or leave it open-ended.

My favorite way to store all of the writing page choices for the bulletin board is in a large 3-ring binder, with dividers for each trait. I use the cover page of this file as the binder cover page. You may choose to display their responses using the bulletin board option, in a binder for students to review and check out, or just as an assignment your students turn in to you. Students could also keep their writing and share it in a daily response journal that they keep as a record of the characters they read about throughout the year. Really, there are so many possibilities 🙂

I’d love for you to try it out! You can grab it by clicking on the link here to start using in your own classroom.

A Career Research Project to Boost Intrinsic Motivation

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Almost weekly, my teammates and I talk about our fifth graders and the lack of intrinsic motivation that some of them seem to have. My biggest concern has always been the potential that I can see in them, but that they don’t put out into their daily efforts in the classroom. And truly, I just don’t think they all know why that’s so important.

You see, I could say it to them all the time, just how much I believed in them, how I knew they could dig just a little deeper, take their assignments just a little more seriously. I could preach about how what they do now matters for their future. But that wasn’t making the difference that I so desperately wanted to see in some of them.

How serious was this problem? My best example is this, I give my students the opportunity to revise and resubmit their weekly reading assignments. If they don’t get the grade they want reported on their graded assignments, they can ask me to send it back to them to redo and resubmit. That’s an amazing opportunity, and about half of them (maybe even more) don’t take advantage of it. Unbelievable, right? I mean, they see their score immediately, may see that it’s a 50, and they move on to do something else. Why wouldn’t a student ask to retry that assignment to get a higher score? It puzzles and worries me, and to be honest, are we really doing our jobs if we aren’t building more intrinsic motivation in our students?

So when New Years rolled around, I came up with a plan. I knew that I wanted to work on goal-setting with my students, but I also knew that I needed to do so on a deeper level. You can read about the conferences that I had with my students for setting goals and reflecting on their performance in my previous post, Help Your Students Set Meaningful Goals Instead of the Same Old New Year’s Resolutions. You can also get a link to the forms I used during these conferences in that post.

That was part one. Part two of the plan was a research report. I had my students research the requirements of their future career goal. They researched the education, task, and skill requirements for that career, and then the reflected into heir current performance and made plans for the meeting their goal. It’s just the right combination! I called the report, “My Future’s So Bright”.

Since having these conferences and discussing their future career goals and plans for getting there, I’ve seen a significant change in some of my students. They had realizations that mattered to them and that they knew they could work on NOW. To be honest, since doing this, I’ve shared how impactful this plan was with pretty much anybody at school who will listen. It’s that good!

If this is a problem you’ve seen in your own classroom, with your own students, any time is a good time to address it. You can grab my conference forms and the career research report and bulletin board kit in my store, just go to the shop tab.

Our Hopes and Dreams – What I Do On the First Day of School

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What are your hopes and dreams for the future?

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of classroom management and the five key elements that you MUST do to be successful. Today, I want to share my Our Hopes & Dreams lesson plan that I use to start that discussion with my students on the very first day of school. It’s not an icebreaker, it’s not a game … this is an activity that has meaning for the rest of the year!

You know how that first day can be! It’s stressful. It’s probably the longest day of the year. I used to spend time making endless lists of plans to keep everyone busy and happy for that first day and half of it never even got touched. What a waste of time!

Now, instead of those endless lists, I use this as a way to get to know my students, build community, establish and discuss our classroom expectations and routines, and incorporate ALL 5 Cs! That last one is big in my district:) This lesson plan is also a part of our Responsive Classroom strategies, so when I say I’m hitting everything, I really mean I’m fitting in everything I’m intentionally trying to work on in my classroom! And by the end of the day, I have a simple classroom display, along with our classroom expectations posters that we make collaboratively, that can be posted on a bulletin board or wall in the classroom for the rest of the year as a reminder of our reason for working hard and following the rules! It’s a win win!

It all starts with one question, “What are your hopes and dreams for the future?” If you’d like a copy of this first day lesson plan that will have meaning and make a difference for the rest of your school year, you can get it by going to my shop or clicking here!

Back to School

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We're so #cool

I changed the theme of my room this year and that means ALL NEW decorations (yippeee!!!).  I absolutely love setting up my room.  It seriously keeps me awake at night thinking about it:)!  So, while I’ve been wakefully dreaming for hours each night, one of the decorations on my mind was a cute, SIMPLE bulletin board display and student gift for our Back To School night and for the beginning of the year.  For fun, I’ve decided to go with a popsicle paint chip theme for my room for the beginning of the year.  (I can’t wait to show it you when it’s all set up!)

This popsicle-themed bulletin board display includes popsicle images and text that says, “We’re so #cool in (grades 1-5)”.  Student gift tags are super cute and say, “Thanks for Pop-pin in!” and look great tied to unfrozen ice pops!  Grab it here for FREE!

thanks for reading!